Analyse af Michael Richards' novelle 'Just like that'

The story takes place in Australia, where a man drives a boy to the outback to shoot kangaroos. The boy is actually a quite nice shot, but the boy dislikes the situation more and more, as the number of killed kangaroos rises. Finally, the boy spots a male kangaroo, he shots the animal and feels like a man, but he also feels regret.

There are only two characters in this short story; we have the boy and the man. The boy is the essential character, and the one we follow throughout the entire story and the man is merely a sort of guide (page 1 line 1 – 9). The man could very easily be the boy’s father, but since he is not mentioned as “the father”, he could also very easily be a man, who the boy shares a bond with. The boy is in his youth and is actually on his way to becoming a man, which he also does at the end (page 4 line 16 – 19), while the man is probably somewhere between 35 -45, since he is still in shape to hunt (page 1 line 16 – 19), but he is still old enough to provide some sort of guidance.